


Supernannies

by aTasteofCaramell



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Brief mild language, Bruce does as he's told, Clint doesn't like babies, Fluff, Fluffy things, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Kids think Thor is awesome, Natasha has a mother's instinct, Natasha is in charge, Steve is the only real adult, There's a limit to how macho you can be around a cute baby, Tony does too, Warning: Children do what they want, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 00:51:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aTasteofCaramell/pseuds/aTasteofCaramell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a hostage situation takes an unexpected turn, the Avengers find themselves trapped in a building as the sole caretakers of a multitude of toddlers.</p><p> </p><p>(For those who care, I now have an email address (atasteofcaramell at gmail dot com) and a Twitter account where I will post writing progresses (twitter.com/tasteofcaramell).)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Supernannies

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to the multitude of kids I help babysit every other Thursday night. This fic is the result of my imagination getting bored one of those nights.
> 
> All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
> 
> Really.

Tony shoved his hand further into the crack, the concrete scraping against the metal with a less-than-calming screech. The air grew hot and heavy around his face while he sweated, his own hot breath bouncing back against his face, reading the data that floated against the thin purple carpet. He vowed to reinforce the air conditioning unit as soon as he got back. Accidentally catching part of a building could lead to undesirable consequences. His other hand clenched the stabilizing rod.

“Bruce, please tell me you’re reaching different conclusions than I am.” Tony shifted, his muscles growing stiff, and the suit groaned.

“While we’re making promises,” Bruce said, “Please tell me the suit isn’t about to snap.” 

“The suit’s fine.”

Bruce edged forward on his stomach, coming into Tony’s limited line of vision. Tony held his head still, as every part of him currently kept concrete from squashing both of them. Bruce reached forward and set a scanner against the exposed wood of the exit door. He fingered the wires that poke out from underneath it.

“I’m assuming your conclusions aren’t good?” he asked, scrubbing sweat out of his eyes.

“Basically, no.”

“Then I’m not reaching different ones.”

“Terrific.” 

They had hoped that the absence of explosions in the partially decimated half of the complex meant that the bombs weren’t there, but it wasn’t to be. Bruce squirmed backwards, bumping Tony’s hand and knee with his elbow while he backed his way out of the short tunnel. Tony waited for him to get clear, and punched the button on the stabilizer. It sprouted legs and expanded until its pads reached the walls of the tunnel. The suit’s lights went from red to green as the pressure lifted, and Tony backed his way out.

A few feet later he emerged into the sunny lobby and got to his feet, opening his visor and gasping the free air with relief.

Bruce gestured upwards while Steve listened and Natasha peered through the dusty front windows with her finger pressed to her communicator. “I would suggest cutting a hole in the ceiling, but the network is so widespread that we could easily cut through a wire that would set them off.”

“What about the windows?”

“No good,” Tony stretched, rolling his stiff neck. “They’re networked into the alarm system. Messing with the windows, the computers, the electricity, or even the telephones might touch them wrong.”

Steve glanced towards the front. “Natasha?”

“SHIELD’s locked onto their location,” she reported, coming back towards them. “One teacher is still with them, but the others have been rescued. They’ve sent a bomb squad our way to try to disable the explosives from the outside, and of course they’ll try to get information from the group.”

“Eeeng, terrorists,” Tony moaned, “I’m really getting tired of ‘em. I’m not counting on Black Scepter just telling us step-by-step how to disable their bombs.”

“This isn’t Black Scepter,” Natasha said. “It’s more like a less advanced spin-off.”

A shrill scream echoed from somewhere in the depths of the building, followed by several small voices bursting into tears.

“I think we’d better go check on Thor and Clint,” Steve said.

“I think I’ll stay here,” Tony started towards the windows, past the butterfly-sticker-adorned desk. “I can watch for bomb-people, listen to the radio, make sure the building stays steady--” Another small voice let out an ear-splitting shriek.

“No.” Natasha grabbed his elbow and yanked Tony along as she marched out of the lobby. “You’re coming with us.” They got closer to the discouraging noises, and Natasha shoved open the gym door with her foot. 

The escalating screams momentarily stopped, and what seemed like at least two hundred pairs of eyes stared at them from close proximity to the ground.

“Here’s the deal,” Natasha said. “Toddlers stay here, and we’ll take the babies back to the nursery. We’ll split up fifty-fifty. Who wants to go where?”

Clint took his fingers out of his ears with a wince. “Nat, what are you doing? We aren’t babysitters.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “We can’t just lock these kids in a room by themselves, and we’re the only adults in the building. Now who wants to go where?”

In one corner, a girl dressed in a pink tutu sucked on her peanut-butter-tangled hair while she clopped a toy horse with one leg along the wall where she sat. The other toddlers clung to each other or huddled with tear-streaked faces, all looking suspiciously near the age of the Terrible Twos. A quick estimate showed not two hundred kids, but about thirty toddlers and twenty infants.

“Babies,” Tony said quickly. “The smaller, the better.”

Natasha’s lips twitched. “I’ll be going babies too. Thor?”

Thor glanced at the babies, the youngest non-walkers of which lay in a hastily-thrown-together pen, some sleeping, one weakly crying, the others looking around at this strange predicament with interest.

“I am afraid I may injure the infants,” he said with a sheepish smile. “I suppose I will stay here.”

“I’ll go babies,” Bruce said. “I don’t feel like running right now.”

“I guess that means Clint and I stay here too,” Steve said. Clint nodded. 

“All right. Thor, you stay here with the toddlers. The rest of you, help me move the babies back to the nursery.”

Thor raised his arms above his head and made shooing motions. “All of you younglings! To this side of the gymnasium!”

The children stared at him in awe and frightened silence.

Steve got down on his heels and pointed. “Hey you guys, go over there.” A bold red-head with a fiery look in his eye jumped up and obeyed, and the more timid followed.

Tony followed Natasha over to the pen, and watched as she scooped up three simultaneously, two in the crooks of her arms and one between her hands. Two let out startled whimpers, and one didn’t even wake up. “Support their heads,” she tossed over her shoulder as she went from the room.

“’Support their heads’,” Clint mimicked under his breath as he picked up two, one of which immediately burst into tears. Clint winced. “Be quiet,” he said, without enthusiasm, as he picked his way across the floor currently being emptied of toddlers.

Tony, deciding to not try to be an assassin when small children were involved, picked up only one that he assumed was a girl—she was in pink pajamas—and held her like an awkward kitten. She blinked her thick eyelids and looked peeved as she hung between his hands, her feet pointing down and her head precariously balanced on her short thick neck. Tony clanked to the nursery with newly-cracked walls that had covered the floor in tiny bits of plaster, and Natasha directed him to one of the couple billion cribs. He set her down on the grubby sheet, and she took three seconds to look around her, and then screwed up her eyes and started to scream. Tony jumped back. “Woah! What’d I do?”

Bruce just glanced at him, depositing a few babies of his own into cribs, who followed suit in wails. Bruce ignored them and Tony fled with him back to the gymnasium, hoping for silence.

He didn’t get it. Thor rooted through the big storage closet and tossed out basketballs and beanbags for the squealing children to play with. Their tiny shrill voices echoed in the huge room and Tony winced, feeling a bit of betrayal as Natasha directed him to take a few of the children who hadn’t been in the pen—they were older, and were employing themselves by crawling around on the floor putting bits of dirt and rock into their mouths. Tony argued that they were toddlers, and Natasha said they couldn’t walk, therefore, they were babies. 

Tony gladly escaped the gymnasium, abandoning it for the nursery as they transported the last of the infants-and-young-toddlers. 

Again, it brought no relief, as approximately ninety-eight percent of the babies were now picking up the sport of screaming. Natasha shut the door and began directing him and Bruce.

“Stark, take off your suit. Bruce, put the plastering in the sink. We don’t want them all getting poisoned by wall chemicals.”

Bruce obeyed, wrestling soggy plaster and strips of wallpaper from the two percent who weren’t crying and quickly turned them into the one hundred percent. Tony was all too glad for an excuse to ignore the conundrum, though he would have preferred to put his helmet back on and seal himself in to lessen the noise. The suit folded up into a briefcase which he set on the counter, next to the sink where Bruce was dumping the plaster.

“Stark!” 

Tony turned around, and Natasha shoved two hushed babies into his arms. 

“Hold them,” she ordered, and ran to another crib. Even though there were a billion cribs in the room, there were about two billion non-crawling infants, which meant that there was more than one infant per crib. 

One wrinkled hand grabbed Tony shirt and yanked. He looked down, and the baby looked up at him, and then its head rolled back and hung off of his arm, staring at the world upside-down. The other blinked slowly and heavily, looking like it was about to go to sleep.

“Um.” Tony looked back up, and stared in awe as Natasha picked up two more infants and gently bounced them, saying something that he couldn’t hear, and they instantly quieted. She glanced up, and stalked back over to Tony, pushing the limp baby’s head back up into the crook of his elbow.

“I said to support their heads!” she scolded.

“Sorry,” Tony said, looking at the two in her arms, one of which smiled up at her reverently with its toothless gums, and the other rubbed at its eyes, its nose snotting, and hiccupped. “How do you do that?”

“Women’s intuition. Sit down.” Tony started to obey, and the babies started sniffling. “Never mind. Stand back up. Bruce!”

Bruce came over, dumping a handful of white paste into the sink and rubbing it on his jeans.

“Here, hold these.” Natasha shoved the quieted babies into Bruce’s arms and ran back to the cribs.

“You can’t keep doing this!” Tony hollered. “We don’t have any more arms!”

His shout sent both of the infants in his arms to screaming. Oh, great. Natasha recognized the renewed cries amidst the others and sent him a glare. Then she ripped the sheets off of an empty crib, yanked some more out of a cupboard that Tony hadn’t noticed, and replaced them. She came back and took the squalling infants from him. “Go hang out with the older ones.”

“Fine,” Tony shuffled across the room and faced an army of crawlers attempting to leave their designated area. He raised his arms out to the sides. “Back! Back you go!”

They didn’t even look up, but one crawled over to him and started to climb up his pant leg, beaming, with black braids sticking out of the sides of her head. Tony grabbed her by the hand and raised her off the ground, depositing her back in the correct position.

“STARK!”

Tony whirled. The rest of the army hadn’t slowed, and he grabbed more collars and hands and dragged crawlers backwards. They took this very well, but as he pulled several back, the rest started forward again. One chubby boy grabbed someone else’s hand and sucked on it while the victim slapped at his ear, another balanced against the cabinets and played with the drawers just over her head, and a third chewed on the corner of the bookshelf.

“You idiots,” Tony snapped, getting hot and red in the face while he tossed the last few rebels back, and he quickly attempted a barricade with a pile of stuffed animals and colorful plastic toys. It didn’t physically block the most determined to break out of their adult-constructed box, but it distracted the others. Tony yanked one more dissenter back, and then collapsed against the wall while he watched the crawlers along the barricade sucking, chewing, and making happy contented noises. 

He then noticed that Natasha and Bruce were beginning to get a handle on the screaming coming from the babies’ side. The little black girl with black braids crawled towards him again, fingered his shoe, and then rested her head down on his knee. Tony started to smile, welcoming this as cute, but the decidedly uncute smell coming from her countered that. 

“Go away,” he grumbled, shaking his leg and shoving her back. He sighed and closed his eyes for an instant.

There was a bang, the sound of an avalanche, and several screams. Tony jerked up. One girl sat sitting by the cabinets with her fingers jammed in a mostly-shut drawer, and the rest of the voices came from the bookshelf that the one crawler had managed to upset, raining board books down on the heads of three.

Then the other babies joined.

Tony wasn’t even completely on his feet by the time Natasha had leapt over the barricade, hair and eyes flaming anger.

“What the HELL, Stark?” she screeched. “Go get Clint!”

“Huh?” Tony said helplessly. Natasha ran and massaged the squashed hand of the drawer-crawler, and then checked the status of the bruised and hopefully-not-bloodied heads of the book victims. 

“GO get CLINT!” Natasha hollered. “And don’t come back!”

Tony snatched up his suit and let it enclose him again before gladly escaping the nursery. In the gym, chaos ensued with balls flying, toddlers running, and golden crumbs that looked to be the remains of a goldfish cracker explosion.

“Hey, Clint!” Tony yelled, glancing around. He could see Thor and Steve, who only sent him brief, confused glances before resuming running around with their charges. “Clint?” Tony looked up, and found Hawkeye sitting at the top of a court basket. Tony pointed towards the door and yelled, “Tasha wants you! We’re switching!”

Clint raised an eyebrow and made no move to descend from his perch. Then, inexplicably, incredibly, Natasha’s voice rose above the chaos from the other room. “HAWKEYE! I NEED YOU!”

Clint just shrugged and made no movements. 

“HAWKEYE!”

He examined his bow, and watched Thor’s antics with a beanbag and two almost-flying toddlers.

Natasha’s voice took on a new note of rage. “BARTON YOU GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW.”

Clint winced and finally swung down from his perch, landing on the floor and sending a few startled, shrieking toddlers scattering away from him. As he passed Tony, he muttered, “I don’t see what everybody finds cute about babies…they’re just little, red, wrinkled, bald people…”

“BARTON!”

He disappeared through the doorway.

Tony stood watching Thor engage in an impromptu game of tag with the majority of the toddlers, who chased him shrieking and laughing while he charged around the perimeter of the room with a bag of Oreo cookies held above his head, and a fierce grin on his face. Tony stepped back, waited for the stampede to pass, and then made his way over to Steve, who sat with a single toddler—who looked more like four years old than terribly two—in one corner. He stood behind Steve and observed.

The little black girl with a bazillion ponytails crafted out of fuzzy black hair poured an imaginary substance out of an imaginary substance carrier into a little pink plastic bathtub that she passed to Steve, and then poured the imaginary substance into a yellow plastic bowl for herself and took an imaginary sip. 

“Mmm! It’s chocolate spaghetti tea!” she declared. 

“Mmm,” Steve said, with more enthusiasm than became a grown man, and also took a sip. Tony could not hold in his snicker. Steve glanced over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “And what useful things have you been doing for the past twenty minutes?” he demanded.

“Oh you know, stuff,” said Tony, clanking to the side and leaning against a wall. “I haven’t been indulging in toddler fantasies, though.”

The girl looked at him, blank-eyed. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” Steve instructed her, and took another loud imaginary sip from the bathtub. “Where do you buy chocolate spaghetti tea?”

“Walmart,” the girl said, still looking at Tony with narrowed eyes as she sipped from her bowl. 

“That teacup really fits you,” Tony said to Steve. “It matches your suit. We really should redesign it: the star-spangled bathtub!”

Steve just sent him another glare. The girl looked back and forth between Tony and Steve.

“I like your suit,” she said to Steve. “It’s pretty. I like the stars.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, and Tony snorted.

The girl gave him a defiant glare. “I don’t like yours,” she announced.

“What are you talking about?” Tony spread his hands out to the side. “Do you know who I am?”

“Iron Man,” the girl said nonchalantly. “And this is Captain America.”

“Then you should know: my suit is awesome!”

“It looks like roadkill,” the girl said, taking another sip from her bowl. 

Steve choked on the imaginary tea and went into a coughing fit. Tony frowned. “What?”

The girl pointed. “Brown is the fur, and red is its guts spilling out.”

Tony’s heart staggered a little bit, and he actually felt a little sick. He put a hand to his heart. “What kind of depraved little mind is behind that innocent face?” 

Steve put his head in his hand and his shoulders shook.  The girl shrugged. “Al Capone.”

“ _What?_ ”

Steve cleared his throat and took another sip out of the bathtub.

“I’m hurt,” Tony grumbled. He closed his mask and turned on the power, his “eyes” now shining an impressive blue. “Is this better?”

The girl looked back up and frowned, observing him for a long time. Tony began to think she might be impressed. Then she took another sip out of her bowl and shook her head. “Now you look like zombie roadkill.”

Steve gave up the fight and giggled, muffling the sound in his palm. Tony opened his mask again. “Well, sh…oot.”

“Want some more?” 

Steve coughed again. “Yes, please,” he said hoarsely, and the girl poured him some more chocolate spaghetti tea.

A thunderous boom echoed from across the room. Thor had landed on his back, and now toddlers swarmed over him, tearing open the bag of Oreos. Tony began to see how the goldfish had been reduced to dust. “Um…should we be worried?” he asked as children stuffed their mouths with cookies and began having slapfights when someone got more than they did.

“No,” Steve said without looking up. “Barring any loss of limbs or concussions, I’ve learned to ignore whatever it is Thor’s doing so long as it keeps the kids happy.”

“Hm,” Tony sat down against the wall and closed his eyes. He actually fell into a doze, only periodically awakened by various minor explosions and screams. 

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Tony opened one eye. A toddler crouched next to his leg, curly blond hair falling over his eyes, knocking on his knee, fist closed around a toy cell phone. 

“Hi,” Tony said, glancing to the side. Steve and the girl had left, and Tony spotted the Captain helping Thor in a badly coordinated game of some weird mix between Red Rover and Red Light, Green Light.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Tony looked back, and the youth still stared at him with wide eyes. “What? Never seen a guy dressed in red and gold armor before?”

The kid held out the phone. “Mama?”

Oh no. He was not going to become a Mallard chick boy’s mother. “I’m not your Mama.” 

The toddler stood and hobbled over a few steps so that his chubby hand rested on Tony’s shoulder. He smelled bad too, and Tony suspected he had just barely escaped the nursery. The boy shoved the phone in his face. “Mama!”

Ooohhh. Tony relented and took the phone, holding it to his ear. “Hello? Hi. Yes, I have your little brat kid with me. You’re his mama.” The kid’s face got ridiculously excited. “Please tell SHIELD to come to their senses and hurry up and get us out of this dadgummed place. Oh, and my rate is one hundred dollars a minute.” Tony held the phone out and the kid took it. He shoved it against his face.

“He-he? Mama?”

Okay. That was cute. Tony smiled. The kid held the phone back out and Tony took it again. “Hi. Yep, he just handed the phone back. Can I talk to his Daddy?”

“Da-da!” the kid yanked it out of his hand and yelled into the speaker. “Da-da! Da-da! Mama sldkj fwioe vnklsdf Mama he-he!”

“Hey, talk to Tony,” Tony suggested. The kid held out the phone. “Hello? Yep, Toooony here. Yes, that’s what I said. Toooony. I’m Toooony.”

The kid took the phone. “He-he. Tooooooe. Dkvne diosgh Mama Toe.”

Close enough. The kid held the phone back out. Tony waved it away and closed his eyes again. He then was clobbered in the nose with plastic. Tony shoved the plastic back, and was punished by ominous sniffles.

Tony grumbled to himself and took the phone, continuing the game. “Hi, Mama.”

“Well, Stark.”

Tony jumped and looked up to see Natasha standing over him with her hands on her hips. It was only then that Tony realized how quiet the other kids had gotten—in fact, there were only a few left in the gym. Tony cleared his throat, lowering the phone.  “Hey there, Widow. What’s up?”

Natasha jerked her head. “SHIELD’s disabled the network. If you aren’t otherwise occupied, we’re evacuating the building now before something destabilizes.”

“I suppose I can end this fascinatingly deep conversation…” Tony snapped the phone shut. “C’mon, Junior.” He got to his feet and swooped the kid up, who let out a wail of protest.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Give him to me.”

“Nuh-uh.” Tony tightened his hold as newly-dubbed Junior accepted his fate and began slapping his palm Tony’s shoulder, gurgling.

“Don’t blame me for the bad press when you come out with a screaming kid.” Natasha turned and Tony followed her out as Thor herded the last of the tots through the hallway.  Some idiot agent blared instructions through a blow horn. 

“PLEASE FILE OUT QUICKLY AND QUIETLY. REFRAIN FROM TOUCHING ANY EXPOSED WIRES. STAY CALM. PLEASE STAY BEHIND THE YELLOW TAPE.”

Junior’s face screwed up at the noise as Tony entered the lobby, where a rather large hole was where one of the front windows had been. Tony patted his back and stuck out his tongue, crossing his eyes. Junior grinned. Tony quickly erased that look from his face as he stepped out of the dusty building into flash photography and an enormous crowd of your average men and women that Tony guessed to be frantic parents—especially as mothers and children let out hysterical cries as soon as they recognized each other. Everywhere were teary reunions as agents and government officials struggled to keep things calm and confirm parentage before they let adults wander off with their newly-acquired kids. 

Junior screwed up his face at the flashing lights, and Tony tried to smile and nod and look heroic with the kid in his arms. Hey, these noble pictures ought to win him some brownie points with Pepper, and help make up for all the less-than-flattering photos that made it into major media outlets. 

Steve escaped the trappings of a reporter huddle and came up beside him, rubbing his hands on his pants. “What took you so long, you who was so eager to get out of here?” he asked, as he smiled and waved goodbye to the black toddler who waved her whole arm to get his attention while her mother carried her away.

“Oh, you know…” 

“PETEY!” A man with wildly curly blonde hair broke through the lines of agents. Junior’s head jerked up and he began to squeal, stretching out his chubby hands and kicking his feet. Tony relented his charge to the man who was obviously his father.

“Thank you!” he gasped out, staring with awe at the two heroes. “Thank you so much!”

“No problem,” Tony half-lied.

“You’re welcome,” Steve said, which Tony thought was a little unfair—Steve taking the credit for Tony’s excellent care.

The media got several photos and probably video of that touching reunion, and then the Father provided ID and information on his kid before he was allowed back into the crowd. Tony noticed that the Black Widow was now staying a safe, untouchable, unsoft distance from the children.

Steve looked back at him. “What’s that?”

Tony glanced down and realized he still held the plastic phone in his hand. He tossed the toy in the air and caught it again, flashing the media a grin. “This? Oh, well, I kind of got stuck…you know what they say…”

“What do they say?”

He gave a helpless shrug. “No matter how mature you think you are, when a toddler hands you a toy phone, you answer it.”  He flipped the phone in the air again, and decided to keep it as a souvenir of this interesting experience. 

Somewhere, a baby randomly decided that was now upset. Tony winced. Valuable experience or not, he was really looking forward to a quiet lab, where the only babies were robots who didn’t scream. 

**Author's Note:**

> First fluffy fic, and first fic without Loki as a primary focus. I'm such a diverse writer. :P


End file.
